The newly constituted board of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams has decided to remove non-Hindus working with the administration and would surrender them to the Andhra Pradesh government, for appropriate action. The board has also decided to use artificial intelligence to cut down waiting time for darshan at the Tirupati Balaji temple.
Addressing presspersons, B.R. Naidu, the new chairman of the board said, “TTD will assess the total number of non-Hindus working in the temple administration in various capacities and surrender them to the government. We shall write to the state government to take an appropriate decision about the non-Hindus working in Tirumala. The TTD is a Hindu religious institution and the board felt that it should not employ non-Hindus to work in the temple,” Hindustan Times reported.
Naidu said they would write to the state government to either absorb them in other departments or offer them voluntary retirement. According to a report in 2018, about 44 employees of other faiths are working with TTD.
The famous temple was in the centre of a huge row over adulteration in its laddu prasadam recently. TTD board has decided to constitute a committee to monitor the quality of ghee used to prepare the prasadam.
Among other key decisions take by the board, it has decided to use AI to cut down darshan time for devotees from about 30 hours to 2-3 hours. The board has also decided to bar individuals from making political statements on temple premises and warned of stringent action against them.
The temple and TTD were midst of controversy recently after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu charged ghee adulterated with animal fat was used for preparing laddu prasadam at the temple during the previous Jaganmohan Reddy regime.
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